Everything You Need to Know About War, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel in 2025 part 3/5

 By Milton Lima 30-12-2024

Edward Said's questioning of Orientalism had already been working with postcolonialism and reflecting on imperialism since 1978.

From 1978 we move on to another work published in 1990 by Robert Fisk: Pyty the Nation - Lebanon at War. The edition I have in my library is from 2001 in Portuguese.

Robert Fisk, tells many stories from his time covering Lebanon, but says that his book is not about the history of the war otherwise it would be an academic book. Regarding his memoirs, I would also point out that any historian who wants to research the history of Israel will not find anything about Israel's involvement in the last 14 years. He refers to three books about the war: The Tragedy of Lebanon (1983); Israel's Lebanon War (1985); The Faful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (1983). Fisk recalls Edward Said's 1979 book "The Question of Palestine" as a classic that shed light on the catastrophe that could unfold in Palestine.

Beware of the history of winners, the first idea of rupture

The first thing you need to know about Lebanon, Palestine and Israel is that they were divided for several decades between those who had territories and those who had nothing but a promised land. With the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, what we will see in the 21st century is a war that brings many connections.

When it comes to power and the powerful in politics, we can't believe in a single narrative. Bringing Edward Said's vision into the debate, for example, marks the study of postcolonialism and reminds us that the past is alive in the present. The only narrative is the Western one. And it tends to be the narrative that Palestine is finally free, but this chronicle of the time after the fall of the regime can bring many surprises. A big mistake on this horizon is to think that dividing Palestine between Jews and non-Jews will bring any benefit, it is wrong and a mistake to believe in this discourse.

            So once again in history we see the winners against the losers. And so, reviewing what Said was dealing with in his studies is an important key to understanding what we are going to work on from the last two texts, which is the current relationship of Zionism in Israel and its influence in this scenario of civil war in the Middle East. While we won't go into the deeper roots of this scenario, we will focus mainly on what Said already pointed out in his work on Orientalism, that there is a tendency in the West to think of the East as inferior. This makes all the difference when the Israelis are in the winning position with Zionism and a clear and obvious way to take territory from non-Jews who would be in the wrong place and on the wrong land. Another mistake of those who read only one narrative.

The rupture that we are going to analyze coldly in the next few episodes is really a civil war that doesn't tend to end with the fall of the regime. The conquest of new territories by Israel and the armed groups considered the resistance in Lebanon will not sell this peaceful idea that the civil war has ended or will end with Israel as the only victorious state. The United States in this story, the idea once again of the inferiority of the non-heirs of the land, makes this scenario very difficult for us to understand what is really happening in the Middle East.

The video below is just a taste of what we'll be discussing in the coming chapters and what you need to know about this war. The last two topics will require a lot more links and a lot more depth, and I guarantee that you won't regret waiting, because I will already be able to analyze this scenario coldly with religion, with the private interests of Israel and Turkey, the extent to which Iran and Russia can get involved in this conflict, in addition to Arabia-Saudi itself, that Biden and Netanyahu, when they started this interest, forgot thatthe Muslim revolution is not over and the conflict will not be resolved onlywith the position of the winners against the losers.